NOTE: Confined Space is back after a short 10-year break and can now be found at: Confined Space.WHAT IS THIS?

Workplace issues, Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), Workplace Safety, Public Health, Environment and Political Information that everyone should know.

What happens inside the Beltway matters outside the Beltway.

That's why they try to keep it secret.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

We Just Came To Work Fight Here; We Didn't Come To Die

You've probably read or heard by now about soldiers in Iraq asking Donald Rumsfeld about why they have to scrounge through the garbage to find armor to protect themselves from being killed by roadside bombs or snipers. Rumsfeld's response can be summarized as "Deal with it, girlie men." OK, this is sort of an Iraq war issue, but it's also kind of a workplace safety issue in that these are soldiers, just doing their jobs, asking for a workplace that's as safe as possible (given the circumstances.)

Now, you'd think that those who obsess about "supporting the troops" (whatever that means) would also be supporting these particular troops. Tom Tomorrow discovers that it ain't necessarily so:

Spent some time listening to Limbaugh and glancing over the righty blogs--the main arguments seem to be that (a) the fact that soldiers are scrounging junk piles to try to protect themselves adequately is just proof that the system is working well--i.e., decent hardworking American boys don't want anything to go to waste; (b) no amount of armor can protect them from RPG's, so why bother to have any armor at all; and via Drudge, (c) the question was planted by some damn liberal reporter anyway. (As to that last point, only one question is relevant--did the reporter also engineer the spontaneous roar of applause from the rest of the troops in the audience?)

Limbaugh went on to liken the troops wanting decent equipment which might help them live out their tours of duty to his own employees whining because they want bigger computer monitors and the dishes in the break room aren't as nice as they would like. Yes, that's right. The fat junkie blowhard thinks that the life-and-death situation for troops in Iraq is no more serious than the size of his assistant's computer monitor. It literally infuriates me, thinking about it. What a worthless piece of human debris this guy is.

As for the question of whether or not any amount of armor is necessary, I simply suggest you go read this. Read to the end. It'll break your heart.

Some of these sorry statements probably remind Confined Space readers of how employers often react when workers ask for safer workplaces:

Oh, and Rummy also claimed that we're making armor as fast as the laws of physics would let us. That sounds pretty fast. Except that he was lying. And while Rumsfeld lies, soldiers.....well, you know. Makes you think that if Rummy had been running World War II, we'd all be speaking German now.